I stayed where I was.
The clip had ended. The screen had gone dark enough to reflect the room back at me, my own face set and unfamiliar in the glass.
I should have been thinking about practice plans. About Olivia’s dinner reservation later that week. About the power play, theroster, the thousand obligations waiting to be handled by a man trusted because he did not let things slip.
Instead, I replayed one word.
Stop.
And Jace Holloway obeying before either of us had time to decide what it meant.
I sat back, rubbed a hand over my beard, and admitted the part that made my stomach turn with warning.
I was beginning to look forward to those moments.
Not the mistakes.
The quiet after.
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
JACE
I woke up thinking about stop.
Not in a dramatic way. Not like I’d had some life-changing dream where Coach Reid stood in fog with a whistle and handed me enlightenment. I woke up because my second alarm was screaming from across the room, my first alarm had somehow ended up under my pillow, and my mouth tasted like I’d slept with it open.
Normal morning.
Except before I even got my feet on the floor, my brain served up yesterday’s video session in perfect clarity.
Me talking too fast.
Him saying one word.
Me shutting up.
That was the problem. Not that he’d told me to stop. Coaches told players to stop all the time. Stop drifting. Stop cheating the play. Stop arguing with refs. Stop acting like a bunch of toddlers with sticks, which was something Roman said more than any coach.
Coach said stop.
I stopped.
That was normal.
Except it didn’t feel normal.
It felt like my body had recognized the command before my pride could get involved. Like the part of me that usually had to wrestle ten other parts into a chair had just sat down because Declan Reid told it to.
I hated that thought so much I got out of bed too fast, clipped my shin on the corner of the frame, and spent thirty seconds swearing at furniture.
My apartment was a mess in the specific way it got when I’d been trying. That was the thing people never understood. When I stopped trying, it got worse. Disaster level. Dishes in places dishes had no business being, laundry becoming geology, mail disappearing into dimensions NASA should study.
This was trying mess.
Practice clothes folded on the chair but not put away. Three water bottles on the counter because I kept bringing one into each room and forgetting the previous one existed. My notebook open on the kitchen island to today’s sheet, which meant I had checked it last night.
